As massive blockbusters like Jurassic World and The Avengers Age of Ultron drop tantalizing teases to the cool stuff they have up their sleeve, Josh Trank’s Fantastic Four reboot stays mum. We have heard traces of possible news items, like the reimagined take on Doctor Doom, or the potential shifts being made to the team’s origin story. Well, a plot synopsis is making the rounds on various sites, posted by a person who claims to have read the screenplay. This could be bogus. It could be legit. Want to know what it says?
I won’t lay out the entire plot. If you want to read it, skip on over to CBM (and know that the whole thing is a massive spoiler for next summer’s Fantastic Four movie.) But here are the points of interest that stood out to me. Heck, I’ll even hide them beneath this footage from the Tim Story Fantastic Four films, in case you made it this far but really don’t want to know any spoilers.
OK, so, in this new version, Reed Richards – played by Miles Teller – is "a genius convenience store clerk" who …
Wait, what? A genius convenience store clerk? Just a reminder, this could be Fan Fiction. But a few points listed in the summary do gel with what we have heard, including the fact that Tobey Kebbell’s villain will go by the name "Victor Domashev," and works as an Eastern European programmer. The summary on CBM talks about how the members of the eventual FF team don’t get along, with Reed and Sue Storm being at particular odds. And when they get to the team gaining their powers, they state:
Storm uses Reed's paper to complete some equations on a machine to access another dimension, the N-Zone. Reed invites Ben to watch the machine being turned on. Sue and Johnny are also there. Doom manages to hack into the Baxter Building's servers and use a computer virus to damage the machine, which explodes. Reed, Sue, Johnny and Ben are exposed to otherwordly energy and become mutants with powers that they can't control."
The concept of the team getting their powers from a portal to another world (the Negative Zone) syncs up with rumors we reported months ago. It also borrows heavily from the Ultimate storyline of the Fantastic Four, and it likely will be the basis for the story being told here.
What else is revealed in the plot summary making the rounds? Well, Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell) can "switch off his powers when he’s not in danger." Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) "changes color based on heat intensity." And Doom "gets technopathy powers or something, basically energy blasts and making machines obey to him." Again, this might be bogus. But enough of it connects with things we had been hearing, so all of this is possible.
Fox can do the movie a huge favor by releasing a trailer with some footage. Because then we have something to actually discuss pertaining to Fantastic Four, as opposed to all of this speculation. The movie opens on August 7, 2015, with a sequel already scheduled for July 14, 2017.
